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Technology Stocks : 3DFX -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Simon Cardinale who wrote (8399)	10/17/1998 8:18:00 PM
From: Jeff Lins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 16960

Ok, I am no technical expert in the graphics arena, but here is my opinion on a few points: 1) why is it that framerate has been thrown in the garbage as a primary factor in chip selection? Sure, it is still important, but everyone is saying,"once you hit 30 fps it doesn't matter...go with resoultion and higher color...". There is some truth to this, but it seems to me that there are some other considerations. In today's generation of games, hardware is fast enough that you can get these bennies while maintaining acceptable frame rate. But what about next generation? What do I want to see? POLYGONS! Lots and lots of them. Actually, I want to see so many of them that I can't really see them at all :) At higher resolutions, the square arm of a Quake marine is a very sharp square. At high color, it is a pretty square. But what I want is an arm, not a square. Higher poly count should make things look better, even at lower resolution and color. Am I wrong here? (Linov?) I would expect that the next generation of games will be able to run at high color and resolution, but I would guess that the increase in polygons will already stress the hardware. Those bennies will no longer be free as the chip resources will be maxed just handling the polygons. It is here that V2 should again shine, especially SLI, as 10x7 will probably be max resolution with the high poly count and still be able to maintain 30 fps. 2) Color- Everybody is talking about TNT and the deep colors, etc... I personally prefer the V2's overfiltered and brighter look. As for brighter colors on TNT, it seems to me that it is a function of saturation that is coming along with an overall darker picture. Maybe I am just used to Voodoo, but I prefer our picture to the awesome color and quality of the TNT (though I certainly feel that TNT delivers excellent image quality).

To: Simon Cardinale who wrote (8399)	10/17/1998 8:25:00 PM
From: Jeff Lins	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 16960

Those numbers for the backlog on Banshee cards is very encouraging. Not from a sales standpoint. Sure, it is nice to sell as much as we can, but the extra 10,000 chips is no big deal. Although, it certainly implies that there will be another 10,000 sold after that and so on, and naturally having such demand is great. But the real benefit is that at retail, people are still looking to TDFX. Even though they could get a superior (aside from glide) card in TNT for $50 more, they are selecting us. We are still in control. What does this mean? It means that when boardmakers, with scarce resources chasing scarce retail sales, need to choose between Us and Them, they will choose Us. The "sure thing". It means STBI makes a Banshee board and turns down SIII. TDFX has maintained its status as a "Bankable" chip maker. It also means that every chip sold increases the user base of Glide. It allows game developers to see that Glide is still a "platform" that can be written to and that will have an audience of millions. So, yes, I am happy right now. We'll see how long it lasts... :) BTW, my wife is leaving for a 2 month trip in a few weeks... the day she leaves you can add one more to the backlog of Banshee shipments :P